TRING, England, 3 Dec. 2006. Specialised Imaging Ltd. in Tring, England, is announcing a new generation of multi-headed Xenon flash lamp designed for ultra-fast cameras that have short recording times.

When using high-speed cameras to fast record transient phenomena very short exposure times are necessary to arrest image motion that typically has a duration of only a few tens of nanoseconds. Normally, the overall time window for which the image capture occurs will be a few hundred microseconds, so short duration high-intensity illumination sources are necessary for this type of recording.

The SIL 500 Joule flash lamps generate extremely high-intensity illumination for periods as short as two milliseconds that can be easily controlled and precisely synchronized to match the time frame of an event being recorded by a ultra high-speed camera.

The new-generation flash lamps are the result of considerable input from people who use high-speed imaging for analysis of fast phenomena, company officials say. The small size of the source, the high intensity light output and the rugged packaging are the result of direct consultation and cooperation.

SIL 500 Joule flash lamps operate on the principle that electrical energy is stored in large capacitors and then released on command into a specially designed flash tube and in doing so creates a high energy luminous discharge.

Xenon, which is used in the flash tubes, unlike other some gases, produces a spectral output which has energies at virtually all the wavelengths of the visible spectrum making it suitable for both film and solid state sensors. The life of the flash tube is rated in thousands of hours so rarely requires replacing.

Another advantage of the new flash lamps is the small power source required to produce the necessary levels of illumination. Conventional tungsten filament lighting that could provide similar output characteristics to the new flash lamps would require many tens of kilowatts of energy as much of that energy is expended as heat.

The SIL 500 Joule flash lamps are cheap to run as they use very little energy. The SIL flash lamps also produce negligible amounts of heat because the illumination results from the excitation of gas molecules. As the luminous intensity is much higher than conventional tungsten lighting the illumination from the SIL 500 Joule flash lamps can be concentrated onto much smaller areas of interest.

For more information contact Specialised Imaging online at www.specialised-imaging.com.